[AnimalMuppet]

Well, my dad was a computer programmer, and there were conversations about computers over the dinner table, but my real start came with a half-year Fortran class in high school. It was kind of a pain - punch out the cards, wait for them to be taken to the real computer (which happened twice a week, then get the results back, change a card, wait for them to be taken again, etc. Not fast turnaround.

Then the school got five TRS-80s. I grabbed one of the Basic manuals and read it in an hour while I was supposed to be paying attention in calculus class (it was pretty thin). I thought "Hey, this is just like Fortran, except the words are different." So then I knew Basic, at least well enough to play with a TRS-80.

Then my dad brought home K&R, and I read it over a Thanksgiving weekend. I understood it all except for argc and argv. The rest was clear, just from reading the book, but argc and argv required being able to experiment to see what they did. My dad tried it at work on Monday, and explained the results to me.